Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Leftists are finally coming out of the woodwork to declare their
euroscepticism. This in my eyes weakens the case for leaving the EU.
When you have the RMT, Owen Jones and Ukip on your side it looks pretty
grim. The leftist arguments are starting to merge with those of Ukip -
not least in their opposition to TTIP.

As we have noted, opposition to the EU over Greece is wholly irrational,
especially from the right - for whom it is also wholly inconsistent,
but TTIP is something they both agree on. The chief complaint being
Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS). But you can see why corporates
would lobby hard for it. COSCO was heavily invested in the bidding
process for Greek shipping ports and then on day one of Syriza's rule,
privatisation of ports was taken off the table. Democracy is a volatile
thing. Why a nation should not be held accountable for ripping up
contracts I don't know.

It is said that the nature of ISDS courts and their secret nature would
lead to corporate gouging of the taxpayer, which is a real concern - but
what is interesting is that the left placed their insistence on it not
applying to healthcare when it is a much more serious concern for
infrastructure and defence. But such intellectually inconsistency is
only to be expected from the left and Ukip.

That is not to say it is a not a genuine concern. Just because the left
are anti-trade and broadly protectionist does not mean the right should
be dogmatically in favour of TTIP. Anti-corporatism, or crony
capitalism, is a cornerstone of libertarianism. It is a matter of fact
that globalisation is happening, it brings enormous benefits to us and
the emerging markets of the world and makes us all wealthier. A trade
agreement between the EU and the US is going to happen in one shape or
another and most of us will be better off for it.

The problem is that it lacks transparency and accountability. It isn't
democratic. People we didn't elect will be making agreements that won't
be challenged by the European Parliament, not least because MEP's are
not intellectually equipped to even approach it. Especially not the
fringe lunatics like Ukip. It's bad for democracy here at home too.

In
effect we're seeing the death of domestic politics as it has effectively
outsourced most of the politics of substance. It's why we have
government ministers debating whether or not teachers should have the
powers to confiscate unhealthy snacks from children's lunchboxes. It's
displacement activity.

These agreements are happening almost completely without national
scrutiny and no right of independent veto. As much as this can mean more
regulation (which is not always a bad thing) it mainly means regulatory
convergence, which often means compromise - which too often results in a
lowering of standards or a reluctance to regulate at all in the
knowledge an agreement will probably fail.

What we need is our own voice at the top table table to ensure that we
get the very best from such global agreements and that we can veto deals
that harm our own standards. More than this, I want to see parliament
re-energised and focussed on the stuff of consequence. More than this,
while we expect TTIP will eventually get where it's going, a lot will
have been removed from it. It will not resemble the original proposal in
scope and depth. And that's actually a pity.

The problem with the EU is it's insistence on bloc trade deals applying
to almost everything whereas Mexico has seen much faster growth in the
automotive sector by a process of unbundling - ie industry and sector
specific trade agreements which happen bilaterally and with fewer
compromises. That is the future of global trade.

Opponents of TTIP oppose it from an anti-globalisation perspective -
fearing a gradual global homogenisation and an erosion of democracy. The
former complaint is pointless. Technology and progress demands
globalisation. It is happening and it is a force of nature equal to
gravity. So the question for my generation and the next is how we
harness that force without sacrificing democracy.

There does need to be an ISDS mechanism. There is no good reason why any
sector should be exempt from it either. Nor is it unreasonable for
agreements to have conditions that demand structural and economic
reforms as we have seen in Greece. But the EU is not the vehicle best
equipped to manage this process. It needs to be more consultative and
cannot be as the EU is where entire nations are summarily overruled -
particularly in our case where we have nations that don't even have a
car industry blocking trade deals that we would benefit from enormously.

The fact is that unbundled trade agreements are much faster to achieve,
and more likely to succeed. As it stands TTIP has all but stalled,
taking us back to 1992. Such agreements can take decades whereas a
simple agreement on global standards for painkillers or wheelnuts is far
more achievable - and it means areas where we have particular standards
and concerns cannot be overlooked for the sake of expediency.

The world is developing in a different way to how the architects of the
EU envisaged. Rather than large blocs forming sweeping agreements we're
looking at inter-governmentalism and sector specific global trade
associations. The model is incremental and tailored according to the
development status of the participants. This is alien to the EU.

This is why there is an apparent intellectual inconsistency on this
blog. I have welcomed Greek port privatisation on the behest of the EU
but at the same time oppose mandatory land reforms and wholesale
privatisation in Ukraine. Greece is developed enough and has had single
market access long enough to (notionally) be able to carry off such
reforms. It just doesn't want to despite having agreed to it. Ukraine
and Poland however have some considerable distance to travel become they
are economically and culturally able to fully converge with the
mainstream single market. A one size fits all approach, imposed all at
once is simply not a good idea. Not in the region and not globally.

The removal of border tariffs and complaining about African
protectionism may be free trade in principle, but it goes against the
principles of international development. In order for there to be free
trade there needs to be an equilibrium between trading systems - trading
on like for like terms. Dismantling protectionist development
mechanisms to pursue a dogmatic free trade agenda has been a disaster
for Kenya, is damaging to Poland and may be catastrophic for Ukraine.

Outside the EU, we would have a good deal more power to put the breaks
on the EU by vetoing proposals at the top table to prevent the free
trade wrecking ball undoing efforts to nurture open up new markets.

It has been proposed this week that Britain should rejoin Efta, which is
indeed part of the interim solution in that Britain would be a leading
voice in Efta and a necessary counterweight to the EU at the global
level. That is presently more influence than we have a subdued EU
member. What we can then do is overtake the EU in securing unbundled
agreements with the USA (and beyond) and achieve more than we could
waiting decades for whatever compromise the EU can cook up.

TTIP represents the thinking of the last century in a world that is so
much more dynamic. We are and always have been a global leader in
setting standards and anything that reduces those standards is an
unwelcome development, and anything that subordinates our parliament to
the level of a local council is insufficient. Our own MPs need to be
fully engaged in matters of trade and development but instead, because
it's an exclusive competence of the EU, it's something we barely even
discuss anymore. It's why the level of debate about trade in the UK is
so lamentably shallow.

We can't stop globalisation, we can't have global trade without some
kind of dispute settlement mechanism and we can't always expect there
won't be losers as well as winners in any final agreements - but a
system that progresses without consultation or consent is one that
cannot survive. The future is a world of nations speaking as equals with
fully engaged legislatures, not as subordinates of unaccountable blocs
who outsource their lawmaking.

The case must be made for an assertive Britain leading the way for
globalisation and making it work while keeping our democracy. The
shallow and timid worldview of Ukip is not the solution, nor is the
paranoid protectionism of the left, but the imperialism of the EU is
obsolete, hubristic, anti-democratic, slow and in some cases dangerous.
That is message the leavers need to promote, otherwise we're stuck for
another generation in a decaying and stagnant bloc with delusions of
statehood. I'm not certain we can survive that.

Tuesday, July 07, 2015

The
EU is not a democracy. The true definition of a democracy is that the
power resides with the people. Not by any measure can this be said of
the EU. For starters, nobody in the Commission was elected, MEP's have
no right of proposal, and if all our MEP's voted together, they could
still not avoid being steamrollered by the EU. That's not simply
outvoted - that's systemically outnumbered. 1.2 MEP's per million people
is hardly representation either. Some argue that the council of
ministers is made up of elected people, but that's neither here nor
there. In effect it is a government the people cannot remove. At best we
can have a partial electorally mandated cabinet reshuffle.

But
it's about more than just the structures and the processes. They could
tweak it here and there but it would still not change the nature of what
the EU is. The EU is an artificial construct in every way. In terms of a
European demos (a people), there is no such thing. Hardly anyone can
name political grouping in the European parliament and in most
instances, unless there's a juicy drama like the Greek crisis, it is
often second rate news or treated as foreign news. To all intents and
purposes the EU is a government yet it is not reported as such.
Pan-European politics doesn't exist.

There is no
single common European identity, history or language either. The
European demos is a construct that simply doesn't exist in the same way
it does for a nation like the UK. We have an island story, a shared
history, a common language, a national character and a shared identity.
That's a demos. Whatever concoction the EU has fabricated is less a
demos as a political partition.

You can't simply print
some bank notes, create a flag and sing an anthem to create a demos.
It's been tried before but it doesn't work. There is no EU demos on
which to base a political union. It exists only in the imagination of a
small minority of EU federalists. Even European elections are couched in
terms of domestic parties - and
serve mainly as an opinion poll on the national government and the EU as
a whole. Hardly surprising then that the public in the main would
return UKIP MEPs. The EU lacks legitimacy, the public knows it and the
Euro votes are an opportunity to say so. They know that power without a demos is simply tyranny and a demos without power is not democracy.

Moreover, the
EU has only ever come this far by lying to its peoples about what it
really is. Even today the arguments against Brexit revolve around the
three million jobs that supposedly depend on the EU. Course, as we know,
the EU is not the single market - but rather than telling an outright
lie, it perists in massaging public ignorance about the nature EU -
which is effectively the same thing. The EU is happy to remain an
obscure and fringe concern to national politics. If the public knew what
you and I know, the No camp would be looking at an easy win.

But
it's actually not good enough to complain that the EU is not a
democracy. The notion that we should "reclaim parliamentary sovereignty"
overlooks that it was parliament who did this to us in the first place.
Maastricht ratification on occured on the back of threats, three-line
whips and brinkmanship, in a parliament of politicans whose own mandates
are far less that 30%. Not forgetting, without separation of powers,
our entire parliamentary system is designed to secure the obedience of
MPs. Why else would we have so may ministerial posts? 119 since you ask.

Even
the Lisbon treaty was never put before the people - This the treaty
that effectively abolished the entity we voted to join to establish
something entirely different. This when 64% of people wanted a referendum on it and well over 50% would have voted to leave altogether. The treaty never went to a referendum and was instead carried
by a large parliamentary majority. If that's what representative democracy looks like,
I'd hate to see what it looks like when it's unrepresentetive. The purpose
of a referendum is to secure legitimacy for decisions where
Parliament alone can not secure that legitimacy. It can't in
these such instances. With only small mandates, themselves in hock to an
SW1 bubble mentality, MPs cannot be trusted with such extraordinary
decisions.

But here we are,
in an undemocratic political union, sold to us on a lie, rammed through
with neither consultation or consent - at the fag end of a fading labour
government. This is why this blog has always maintained that the UK is
not a democracy either. Commentators confuse process and ritual and
voting traditions with democracy. By definition democracy means that the
people hold power, yet we rarely see any instance where the people
wield power.

Given how few
powers councillors have and how restrained their decisons are by
Whitehall and Brussels, it would be fair to say there is no actual
democracy anywhere in the system. We have a benign managerialist
dictatorship - and our occasional elections are little more than opinion
polls. A change of guard seldom produces meaningful change. The charge
that "they're all the same" isn't unjustified. They're not all the same,
but the way the system is rigged, the outcomes are often the same
either way. By every measure that the EU is considered
undemocratic (unelected commissioners etc) we must apply that same logic
to our own system. After all, our own system resulted in a Conservative
win primarily because of Ed Miliband's lack of personal appeal. Like it
or not, parties are elected on the basis of their leader. But who
actually voted for their own constituency MP? And who actually voted for
the Prime Minister?When it comes to more local concerns, we've been
front and centre in the fight against wind turbines. We never wanted
them, but were forced to have them anyway. It took ten years for the
government to "allow" local councils final authority over them. But the
fact such powers are gifted from the centre is yet more proof that the
power does not reside with the people, thus by definition we are not a
democracy. Similarly, with "DevoManc", as I understand it, Manchester is
about to get a mayor it does not want to preside of a region that
doesn't technically exist and nobody asked for. The accepted definition of democracy is that we have a
vote once in a while, and somebody who is returned on less than a
quarter of the vote is free to make decisions for us. One man or woman
supposedly represents the hopes, needs and aspirations of seventy
thousand of us. The Commons model is not all that far removed than when
it was a talking shop for rich barons from the regions to discuss their
own narrow concerns. That's ultimately why we argue that proportional
representation won't make a difference. Representative democracy just isn't democracy at all. We believe that Brexit, while inherently desirable
does not "restore democracy". We cannot restore that which we have never
had. Thus Brexit is merely the first stepping stone to democracy. Being
ruled from London is little different to being "ruled" by Brussels. In
ether case we are still ruled and both are remote from the needs of the
people they supposedly serve. Arguably London is further detached from
us since SW1 culture is barely aware of anything outside its own
self-referential claque. They genuinely see themselves as an elite.It seems our first concern is to educate the public
in what democracy is and what it looks like. If we can do this then they
will conclude for themselves that neither Westminster or the EU is
democratic and start demanding real change. Leaving the EU is only the beginning.

Sunday, July 05, 2015

If you look at the latest package of DfID measures
aimed at mitigating the migration crisis in Africa, we see a splurge in
humanitarian measures of the type you're all fairly familiar with. You
will see posturing politicians on Twitter announcing why this makes them
proud to be British. It suits their vanity. Sadly they never stop to
ask what happens when the money runs out. When you're adopting a
sticking plaster strategy no money will ever be enough. You would think
that a department for international development would know this.

But then it isn't just DfID who have a wrong-headed approach to aid and
development. On the one hand we have the Ukip's of this world demanding a
massive reduction in foreign aid and on the other eurosceptics who
assume we can quit the EU and simply trade with the Commonwealth through
free trade agreements. If only it were that simple.

Border tariffs are no longer the central obstacles to global trade.
Global trade is more about the removal of technical barriers to trade,
and negotiations are centred around regulatory convergence. Differing regulatory regimes create trade chaos, adding multiple layers of bureaucracy to the process. It is often said that less regulation would
be good for business whereas what we need is more and better regulation
shared by more partner nations. At the very least this eliminates the
need for port inspections which leave trade open for theft, fraud and
delays incurring demurrage and detention fees (over $70m annually in
Ghana).

And of course if you have delays in the ports, you have long tailbacks,
wage costs and warehousing capacity problems which halt production. In
turn that results in the loss of contracts or damages a manufacturers
credit facilities leading to bankruptcy and foreclosure. This results in
a high turnover of companies popping up to service only one contact at a
time with little in the way of business longevity, leading more and
more untraceable fly-by-night companies exploiting the chaos, often
introducing components into the supply chain which fail to meet
international standards. The natural response to this is yet more inspections and delays.

To take one
Commonwealth nation, Nigeria, it is said that the maritime industry
alone could sustain the economy but not without massive modernisation.
The road leading to the Lagos
port, which handles nearly everything that Africa's biggest
economy imports, is one of the most congested in a megacity
whose traffic jams are legendary. Wide enough to accommodate only two
lanes on either side,
along it move the goods that Africa's top crude producer uses
its huge oil receipts to buy - everything from designer wear to
dried fish, champagne and shampoo. In the case of perishable or
degradable goods from woodchip, coal through to foodstuffs it can result
in a loss of of value or abandoned consignments.

And it's not just the roads that cause delays. Importers say that rules are not always followed, and
officials can still hold back shipments while they await
bribes. They've all got a scam going, from the man that wheels your
trolley out to the senior customs officers. Nigerian authorities "inspect" 70 percent of
cargo, compared with around 5 percent in the European Union.

Of course none of this actually matters if goods never reach their
destination. Piracy is still a huge problem - and not just for Africa.
Piracy has overtaken natural disasters as the leading cause for
insurance claims in ASEAN states according to those in the marine
insurance
industry. While most claims are genuine there has been a disturbing rise
in the number of ‘insider jobs’. Insiders may be members of the crew or
even
shipping companies themselves.

There is also the issue of antiquated dock equipment. For example, wood
pellets exhibit two undesirable handling attributes. Due to multiple
handling some pellets degrade back to dust which can block the cooling
system heat exchangers resulting in engine overheating. The dust is also
highly flammable and must be prevented from settling in the engine
compartment. The implications of the loader overheating or catching fire
extends far beyond the cost of damage to the machines.

Efficient
unloading of wood pellets is crucial to maintaining a port’s schedule.
Any delay means that a ship will miss tidal deadlines and incur
additional high demurrage costs. An overheated conventional loading
shovel takes 45 minutes to lift out of the hold in order to clean the
heat exchangers and remove dust from the engine bay, then a further 45
minutes to put it back in. This has a significant impact on the
productivity of the trimming operation so having the right wheeled
loader is critical.

Then we get to regulations. Here is an illustration. Back in May, Chinese customs stalled Australian and South African
coal deliveries that exceeded fluorine limits under the country's new
quality regulations. Australian
5,500 kcal/kg thermal coal was sold to a Chinese cement producer and is
understood to have been rejected by the local inspection and quarantine
bureau. The cargo was later redirected to a buyer in Taiwan, and the South African 4,800 kcal/kg coal was sold to a
Chinese trader but underwent a third round of inspections after failing the first two checks.

China's main
economic planning agency the NDRC mandated that coal imports must
meet quality standards for five trace substances - with mercury content
of less than 0.6 microgram/gram (µg/g), arsenic below 80µg/g,
phosphorous below 0.15pc, chlorine below 0.3pc and fluorine below
200µg/g. These are in addition to restrictions on ash and sulphur
content of a maximum of 40pc and 3pc, respectively. The quality
regulations took effect on 1 January and have raised waiting times,
which have in turn increased demurrage costs and the risk of rejection
at ports.

The rejections trigger a fresh wave of
concerns in the Chinese import market. Buyers will take responsibility
for the coal, because they are likely to have bought the cargoes on a
Free On Board basis. While they have sought to minimise risks by
requiring
suppliers to offer guarantees on the five trace elements on a loading or
discharge port basis, China relies on its national standards for the
quality checks rather than the widely used international ISO and ASTM
standards.

Many of the major testing agencies in Australia and South Africa do not
offer checks based on the Chinese standards, although tests for China's
standards are available in Indonesia with costs of 20-25¢/t already
factored into prices. In addition, the longer shipping
journey to China from Australia and South Africa will probably result in
some coal quality degradation.

Here there is a clear need for a memorandum of understanding between
these trading nations, agreeing to one standard and one inspection
regime to facilitate trade. That in itself is no small undertaking. The
introduction of such an agreement in a package deal (like TTIP) means
that if one article fails to reach agreement, the whole package of
measures are dropped. When a market as large as China is starting to
make regulatory demand of its own for imports, there has never been a
time where international agreements were more necessary. But they are
not happening between the EU and China but between regulatory
commissions and authorities at the level above.

Just securing an agreement with Japan's automotive industry to join
United
Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) would eliminate much of
the regulatory divergence in the automotive industry. A comprehensive
"trade deal" between the EU and Japan then becomes largely redundant. If
we can work toward a similar agreement in electronics then again the EU
is totally irrelevant.

Similarly the The International Air Transport Association (IATA) and
(UNECE) has signed a Memorandum
of Understanding (MoU) to strengthen their support to developing
countries seeking to implement the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Trade
Facilitation Agreement. All the bluster about the EU negotiating with
other blocs is a mentality belonging to the last century, with global
trade bodies now securing their own interoperability frameworks, leaving
the EU far behind.

What this points to is the need for independent nations to be in at the
very top tables arguing the case for the industries they have rather
than taking a back seat and waiting to see what what compriomises the EU
can come up with, in a bloc where nations will vote through measures
affecting industries not even present in their own states.

Were we to leave the EU, we would be in the almost unique position of
having first rate infrastructure, favourable trading conditions with the
EU but also the freedom to negotiate individual deals that make our own
industries more competitive. Our car industry may depend on it.

The future points to a model of aid for trade by which we invest not in
schools and drinking wells in the middle of the desert, but in ports,
roads and security. If we are to have a statutory minimum spend on aid
then some of our defence spending in policing shipping lanes could very
well count toward that to ensure goods get to market. In pooling our
sovereignty and delegating trade to the EU we miss opportunities and
fail to get the agreements we need.

Superficially, favourable tax regimes and low tariffs look attractive
but the reality of trade tells another story. Multinationals can easily
decamped from advanced nations in search of lower overheads and
favourable tax regimes only to find the level of under-development and
corruption is an overhead in itself.

As we can see, merely eliminating trade tariffs (which is not always
desirable) is not enough. There is a long road to travel before we get
anything like functioning global
trade. In some cases, import bans are essential to helping grow key
industries. Ghana has banned imports of Tilapia fish, estimating the ban
will create about 50,000 jobs in the aquaculture
sector of the economy, where young unemployed persons are being
targeted. There's an immigration target met right there. Such industries
are needed to stimulate a tax base so that African states are more
dependent on the revenue from their peoples than oil giants. This is one
example where EU "free trade" conflicts with other desirable global
outcomes.

A humanitarian aid effort does nothing to
mitigate the need for migration and slowing the flow is not going to
come cheaply. The EU's answer is to put up fences and mount aid
operations. It doesn't work. What we also don't need is the EU ploughing
into Africa pulling
down tariff barriers (as it has in Kenya) - and rather than package trade
deals between blocs such as the EU TTIP, we're better off going for
individual agreements targeted as specific industries, which are not
only more effective but can be agreed upon in much shorter time frames
resulting in more rapid dividends.

What is clear on both sides of the Brexit debate is that on matters of
trade an international development we are not even past first base in
the level of understanding. It's pitiful. Understanding all of this is
essential to tackling the multifarious problems we face, not least
immigration and asylum, and yet they're stuck in shallow debates about
TTIP and trading blocs, blissfully unaware of how irrelevant the EU is
to the process.

In reality, UNECE is the single market and the gateway to globalisation,
yet it is seldom mentioned or monitored. The Brexit debate is mired by a
little Europe mentality on both sides, to which the concepts we are
talking about hereabove are entirely alien to them.

What is at stake here is the opportunity to add trillions to global
growth, while solving many of Africas most acute problems and many of
our own in the process. Meanwhile from the EU we get compromises, half
measures and yet more vanity aid, while failing to address the very real
and pressing issues - many of which are caused by the fundamental flaws
in the EU's own DNA, along with its trade psychology that belongs to
the middle of the last century.

Brexit offers us a real opportunity to to step into the modern world of
globalised trading and to drag Europe kicking and screaming along with
it. The federalist dream is dead. The global dream is only just
beginning and we're not even in the game.

We've heard a lot from various vested interests about the
implications of Brexit on the British auto industry. Firstly it's
important to understand the nature of the car industry before wading in.
Like most expensive consumer items, the actual profit comes not from
the product itself but the finance deals. In essence, a car is credit
bait. There is little profit in selling a car for the sticker price.
Average monthly dealership profits can be as little as £15k and often
make losses.

It is therefore incumbent upon car manufacturers to
increase profitability by optimising supply chains and cutting down
labour costs.

What we're hearing from the political class, from
their position of ignorance, is that Brexit could result in tariffs of
up to 10% on the finished product - which could result in manufacturers
quitting the UK. Given the size of the market, it seems implausible that
the EU would be so keen to shoot itself in the foot even if the WTO allowed it (which it doesn't), but let's suppose
they're right and they add 10% to our exports. We can adjust to that.

As you all probably know by now, trade negotiations are an exclusive
competence of the EU. The EU negotiates our trade deals for us. The EU
has agreements with dozens of nations, but still applies tariffs to
imports from non-EU countries. Because the EU likes old fashioned trade
packages like TTIP, encompassing dozens of industries and products, the
results are often less favourable than if individual agreements on
certain products and markets were unbundled. That means if the EU gets a
bum deal, we get a bum deal.

That may be no big deal to those
member states who don't import certain components, but that's a sticking
point for us since we have a thriving automotive industry. Since we
can't veto a bad trade deal, politically or practically we put up with
what the EU can get for us. Europhiles insist that we don't have the
clout without the EU but in reality sovereignty pooling leads to
collective impotence.

We have seen in recent years a departure
of the US automotive industry to Mexico which trumps the US on free
trade. It has agreements with 45 countries, meaning low tariffs for
exporting those cars globally and favourable deals on the import of
components, for which both the US and the EU have protectionist barriers
on.

We could do precisely the same outside the EU. It would at
least mitigate the 10% tariff and best case scenario increase the
profitability of the industry attracting yet more assembly lines. Far
from losing our automotive industry if we leave the EU, given the EU's
fixation with packaged trade deals with other trading blocs, we might
well lose our assembly lines if we DON'T quit the EU.

Already we
have seen the industry decamp to Eastern Europe to cut down on wage
costs, but these savings won't last long as wage demands will eventually
catch up to the rest of the EU. Given the Euro's woes the next move is
for the entire industry to quit not just the UK but the EU entirely.

What we need is the flexibility and sovereignty to agree our own
specific unbundled deals tailored for the industries we have. Not least
because such agreements can be reached inside a couple of years, whereas
deep and comprehensive trade agreements and association agreements can
take up to sixteen years to negotiate. In an increasingly globalised
world, moving ever faster, the quagmire of the EU is unsuited to today's
markets. It's a last century system for an internet connected world. It
harms our competitiveness, reduces our influence and inhibits industry
growth.

The scaremongering about Brexit is not only unjustified
but also primarily influenced by people who don't actually know very
much about supply chains or global trade. They are locked into a belief
system that says only vast trading blocs can deliver prosperity. Mexico
is busy proving them wrong. And so can we.